Corvette Engineers Arrested for Street Racing, Apparently Fired From GM

Earlier this month, two GM engineers were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky for illegally street racing the new 2020 Chevrolet Corvette. Three Stingrays were present, but only two of the men were caught breaking the law. Kentucky State Police stopped Alexander Thim and Mark Derkatz on January 8th, on Lovers Lane in Bowling Green, for exceeding the road’s 45-mph speed limit.

Thim was busted doing 120 mph while Derkatz settled on a nice, round 100 mph, according to local outlet WNKY. However, even 26 mph over the limit would be enough to haul them into custody and set court dates that could end in a suspended license. It seems the two men were also fired from General Motors for hooning the mid-engined C8 before the general public was provided the opportunity.

On Wednesday, CarBuzz noted the men had changed their professional profiles to indicate they were no longer employed by the automaker:

Both of their respective LinkedIn pages reveal they each stopped working for the automaker as of January 2020. The timing is not coincidental. Thim’s page even specifically mentions he “previously worked at General Motors launching the new 2020 Corvette.” Derkatz wrote on his page, in past tense, about his “multiple roles at General Motors.”

Both are young, Thim is just 27 and Derkatz is 30, so they’ll find new jobs sooner or later. They’re also talented and highly-skilled engineers once assigned to work on perhaps the most important project the automaker has done in years. We can’t confirm whether they were fired or chose instead to resign, but it’s clear they’re out of the job at the moment. This all could have ended far worse if either of them got into a serious accident either injuring themselves or someone else.

While Lovers Lane appears to be a rather predictable and mostly straight road, driving at over twice the posted limit in an area with both residential and business traffic isn’t something we’d recommend. Obviously, the local authorities feel similarly.

“If the speed limit is 45 miles per hour, there is a reason for that so if you double or almost triple that, it makes it a lot more dangerous. There is a lot more things that can go wrong. It makes it a lot harder to see what is in front of you. It is a lot harder to react to vehicle and things in front of you,” Kentucky State Trooper Daniel Priddy told WNKY.

The men reportedly identified themselves as GM engineers when stopped by the police. They were held in the Warren County Regional Jail overnight and released on a pair of $1,000 bonds the following day.

[Image: General Motors]